


i saw atlas and he was kind

by superbayern



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: 2014-2015 Formula 1 Season, 2016 Formula 1 Season, 2017 Formula 1 Season, And Sebastian doesn't approve, Breathplay, Formula One, Inner Dialogue, Intercrural Sex, Kimi just wants his ice cream, M/M, Max is soft and impressionable, Max just wants love, Mind Games, No one likes Jos, Older Man/Younger Man, Oral Sex, Red Bull Racing, Scuderia Ferrari, Semi-Public Sex, Summer Vacation, crying sex, happy-ish ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-07 20:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15227697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superbayern/pseuds/superbayern
Summary: Max finds himself in Kimi, pressing into pine aftershave, renewed vigour, alien gazes, and Kimi tries not to get consumed by hungry ambition.





	1. Brazil 2014

**Author's Note:**

> 4 part story spanning 2014 to 2018 revolving around max and kimi. i think christian horner once said kimi could be max's father and i geeked, so that's where this whole thing came from.

_Brazil 2014_

 

Max Verstappen first dons a race suit at age five, Jos in the background, like he constantly is, straightening his son’s collar, trying to tame his intractable pout.

 

“Straighten your spine, son,” were the first words Max remembers his father saying, one hand squeezing against Max’s neck, clammy with pre-race nerves. Max wins that race and Jos tugs at his shoulders, trying to ossify him into upright triumph.

 

Eleven years later, “the human spine is extraordinarily resilient, you know,” would become the first words Kimi Raikkonen says to him as he pulls a hand through his knotted race hair as both reclined in an airport lounge between layovers. Max’s layover flight is delayed—stranded in Italy and contented to playing games on his mobile and sneaking glances at his unlikely companion.

 

Studying the strong-shouldered Finn, in some ways, Max sees Jos, both defined by unreadable, deep-set eyes and an unsettling reticence, but no, he reminds himself from time to time; Kimi is something much greater, something burning brighter than his father was.

 

Then Max reminds himself, he would, should _, must_ burn brighter than both.

 

“The spine can withstand hundreds of pounds of pressure,” the Finn continues in his unflappable manner, tucking his cap over mussed hair. “The entire skeleton is the key to our motility.” More a thinker then, Max decides, noting that piece of information away for future use for—or maybe against?—the older driver.

 

“My father says the same,” he said, all too conscious of the silence of the airport lounge pressing around his ears, enveloping his head, echoing the Formula One paddock’s scrutiny. Something then flashes through Kimi’s eyes. Disgust? Caution, Max decides.

 

Perhaps Kimi was the elected driver to browbeat him, Max reconsidered. He eyed the Finn’s slump on the lounge sofa with a melting ice cream in one hand and passport papers precariously used as a napkin, deciding if that was true, then they had decidedly picked the worst possible man for the job. Kimi set into his Magnum with renewed vigour and retreated back into silence.  Max settled similarly into his seat across of him, eyeing his business class ticket from Brazil to Munich and wondering in the back of his mind if Tost would pay off the upgrade to first class even if he wasn’t a Toro Rosso driver yet per se.

 

“The pundits rate you highly,” Kimi tossed out to break the silence. His steel blue eyes seemed unreadable, ensconced in an almost alien persona to Max as he burned with one-half the vigour and seven-tenths the commotion.

 

Mind games, then. As Jos had warned and broken into him. “They do,” Max countered with the proper amount of contrition and humility mixed with a thin smile and straight spine. Kimi just levels him with another glance, a smaller, different man without the red race suit of Ferrari esconcing him. _More worldly_ _—_ _just a man_ _—_ _not unlike Jos,_ Max’s mind skips through.

 

They end in the furthest stall of the airport bathroom, Kimi’s callused thumb rubbing soft circles around his jaw as he presses deeper into a saliva-slicked mouth. He’s sucking Kimi Raikkonen, former world champion, off, Max realizes in one rapid shock of realization—panic—lust, letting the Finn rock into him and nearly choking in one go. He enjoys this, Kimi moans, surprisingly articulate as he doubles in hollowing his cheeks. Yes, Max thinks with his knees grating into cold tile and chin wet with spit and precome—swallows to prove Kimi enjoys it too. And there is something perverse about being on his knees in front of a man twice his age, another racer, when one slip of the tongue could end his career before it started. Max knows what Jos would say: stupid, reckless, shake some sense into his son. But when Kimi thumbs away stray traces of his release from Max’s cheek with a vestige of tenderness and slips back into his alien silence, his trainers are damp, despite his father's warnings.

 

It’s not until his plane is suspended miles above the ground that Max washes down the bitter taste of Kimi with apple juice—too young for scotch the prognosis form the flight attendant serving drinks.

 

And if his mind skips over the smell of pine lingering on his shirt, he doesn’t give it much thought.

 

 

 


	2. Spain 2016

_Spain 2016_

 

Kimi celebrates Max’s race win in the only way he knows how: terse responses, a brief smile,  and if a stray room key briefly goes missing to the bewilderment of his travel assistant and the concealed relish of Kimi, it’s none of his concern. He’s happy, he assures the emotional, wallowing Max as he presses dry kisses to the side of the Dutchman’s wet jaw in his secluded hotel. Good race, yes, proud, he says until Max consigns to gulping down his own frivolities and undoing the buttons of his polo.

 

Kimi rolls a condom on with one hand, the other idly squeezed around Max’s jugular, and he’s content to take Max to the root with a brief kiss pressed to teary eyes and a gaping mouth. Content to pause there, absorb the tremors of Max around him before lashing his hips deeper—harder. Max begs like this, pale legs twined around Kimi, a hand stroking insistently at his own arousal. Kimi would take a photo if he could of the sight of Max unravelling as he presses a finger in beside his cock and using the other hand to pet at Max, stretching the younger even further. It's not perverse, Kimi reassures himself, to take pleasure in the sight of the paddock's darling, a star in the making, like this. It'll just be their secret, he tells the Dutchman, squeezing evermore tightly. Max ends up making a mess, coming across both of their chests as Kimi flops onto the futon, too winded from the race and Max’s irrepressible energy to care about the stickiness across his skin.

 

Max spreads open-mouthed kisses across Kimi’s collar in the moments after sex, presses closer and filling Kimi’s nose with the scent of lemongrass, champagne, sweat. His cheeks are tinted pink with inebriation, Kimi realizes, flashes back to his first win—was he as young?

 

The door echoes sharp knocks minutes, hours? later, jolting Kimi awake from where he had slipped asleep. Kimi levels a glance at the occupied place next to him, Max, still in pulled-down shorts and socks, mouth wide open in sleep. Not Max then. Panic sets in then: he casts a second look at Max, fresh bruises across his neck, and himself, the strong smell of sex spread across his torso. Kimi in panic moves faster than Kimi in race, the cheek of youth remarks as he shakes awake Max, shoves him into the bathroom, closes the door.

 

He opens the door like that to an unimpressed Sebastian— _Sebastian_ groans as he ducks into the room beneath Kimi’s barred arms.

 

“I know why you didn’t take the night flight out now,” he says, sniffing disapprovingly. “And here I was, thinking you were an old man.”

 

Kimi scoffs, trying valiantly to shepherd the German towards the door. A momentary pause, Kimi turns to see what the diversion is, and his tension comes crashing abruptly around his ears. Sebastian dangles the discarded Red Bull shirt from the ground, gazes at Kimi with an unknown emotion. A minute passes, an eternity—perhaps he would go back to rallying, Kimi thinks. NASCAR maybe; America was nice this time after all.

 

It’s not until Sebastian’s left, silent but radiating disapproval, that Max slinks out of the bathroom with shower-wet hair and belt fastened, ready to leave. Kimi tears him away from the door, swallows questions with  a wet tongue. Fucks into the crevices of Max’s thighs, rocks against his balls, kisses away Max’s  high pitched whines as he shivers and comes a second, third time. Kimi rocks against Max before he hits the edge, spurting his release against his rim and rubs it into Max with fingerfuls lustfully.

 

“And I thought you were an old man,” Max manages teasingly, petting at Kimi's inked arms. "Who was that?" he queries moments later, afterwards as Kimi shutters his eyes, part shelter from the city lights shining in from the skyline, part refuge from the vivacity of youth Max thrums.

 

 _Catch a flight,_ _father, briefing,_ Kimi catches more snippets from drifting in and out of sleep as he draws away, redresses—leaves. He waves a hand at the question. “No one,” he assures, drowning out worry of Sebastian’s knowing parting look with exhaustion.

 

Max, shining race-high eyes and dusky pink cheeks eyes, with all youth before him, believes it.

 

 


	3. United States 2017

_United States 2017_

 

Max seeks out Kimi in the sparsely decorated motorhome, ducking into tight nooks on his way to the shut door of Kimi’s room. He’s too high profile, he knows, reckless, idiotic if he gets caught. His mind runs through all the media headlines— _Max Verstappen: Red Bull Spy_ or _Spygate 2.o, the Verstappen saga?_ and expends a laugh at how the truth would be received.

 

He tells Kimi his musings as he ducks in to find the Finn napping idly on the sofa. “Of course your name would be in the headlines,” Kimi mutters as he yanks down the zipper to Max’s windbreaker, hikes up hs shirt, and presses bruising kisses to his ribs. Max casts a glance at the time, it’s enough. He tucks down the band of his boxers insistently, guides Kimi’s calloused hand to the swell of his hips, swings a leg around to enclose the older man in.

 

“You’ll be sitting in a driver’s seat in two hours,” Kimi mumbles, his fingers probing against his rim regardless. He twitches despite himself as he rolls his hips against Kimi and fumbles for his belt. It’s always quick business with Kimi: one of the things that pushes Max back to him. No palty conversations, just rolling hips and bruising hands. Discrete, at least—one thing he picked up from his father's preachings.

 

Kimi doesn’t even pull all the way out, only changes the angle so Max is precariously balanced against the wall and he gets deeper. When he comes without warning, spilling into Max, the younger exhales, and sometime along the way, tears have spilled out—tears Kimi presses his mouth to in solace. With another smattering of kisses and a wipedown, Kimi sends him on his way, a little sorer to his personal trainer to prepare for the race.

 

The race itself is jam-packed. Max flings his car across tarmac, throws his weight into overtakes, sweeps past Kimi, feels the vibrations in his sternum—elation, if only for a third place—fourth, they tell later—frustration perhaps, as he flings a towel aside and faces the press stony-faced.

 

After the race, Kimi corners him in the paddock on the side of a loading truck, flashing ice chip eyes and rough hands. Max can tell he won’t escape punishment and tries to duck out of it, soothe him with gangly limbs and wet kisses, but Kimi is all snapping temper, sporting the 3rd place hat Max had coveted. He yanks down his race suit and underwear silently, roughly thrusts in where Max is still swollen and loose from their earlier tryst. And Max is flush against a midfield-team’s ironwork truck, getting fucked by another man, another racer, and this is nothing new—he shouldn’t be surprised at his own sidling that’s gotten him into this position, but he is. 

 

“Fuck you in front of the entire paddock,” Kimi snaps, grabbing roughly at Max’s cock and sliding easily through the slick as Max clenches involuntarily around him at the idea. “Fuck you at the driver’s briefings up where Charlie sits, and everyone can see who you really are. You’d like that, the attention. In front of all the cameras, the mechanics.”

 

Max whimpers at that, convulsing as he spills against Kimi’s pulled down fireproofs. It isn't long before Kimi finishes a second time in him as he can hardly control the keens Kimi pulls from him. And when he starts to shift and slide out, Max wraps his leg around him tighter and pets at Kimi’s sweat-slicked nape.

 

“A little longer,” he begs with pink-flush cheeks to a disgruntled acquiescence from a tender Kimi. And Max knows how dangerous this is, where any mechanic, any broadcaster can find them, but he won’t, _can’t_ let go if only because Kimi is something to hold onto.

 

Later, on their shared flight to Mexico, Max apologizes and stares at Kimi with soulful eyes. “I love this, you know,” he throws out in that youthful confidence intermingled with hesitance and insecurity.

 

Kimi glances over from his seat and doesn’t respond. And Max knows he doesn’t have to; he doesn’t even want him to, he realizes.


	4. Somewhere in the Mountains and then Monaco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a lot of mixed feelings about this last chapter bc the ending doesn't feel quite right but it feels like the only way this pairing could possibly end without angst (because we are wholesome around here hehe)
> 
> anyways, this is it for these two idiots <3

Kimi regrets vacationing with Sebastian the minute he gets roped into testing the pool, just minutes after they’ve arrived in the Pyrenean getaway the German’s raved about for months. He turns down the mojito he gets offered and finds a deck chair to take a nap in, happy to tune out the chattering of his younger teammate.

 

“You’re seriously taking a nap on vacation?” Sebastian snaps duly, splashing water onto the Finn, and Kimi, disgruntled, acquiesces.

 

“It’s nice,” he mutters through his teeth as he casts a glance around the snow-capped view. Maybe a place to bring Max, he notes and files away. Or maybe the idyll would be lost on him. Might wonder why Kimi wastes his time in his idiosyncratic ways.

 

And perhaps Max just knows when Kimi spares him a thought because his phone vibrates—couldn’t be bothered to learn how to use the thing until Max and his assistant both sulkily reprimanded him for forgetting to respond to their texts. A picture, Max smiling with an ice cream in one hand. _Oh_ , Kimi thinks. He’s dyed his hair more blond, forgone a shave for the scruffy beard Kimi hates but puts up with, gotten a sliver tanner. ‘Your favorites,’ Max has signed off the text, and the humor isn’t lost on Kimi, who cracks a closed-lipped smile despite himself. He’s gone on a health drive, and Max knows it—lost several kilos to the point where the younger jokes he can outmuscle Kimi without a sweat. He’s not an old man yet, Max likes to assure him but fittingly joins him on his diet.

 

He tells Sebastian this, as he grabs his phone and quirks a brow accusingly at the photo. “Seriously?” the German asks incredulously. Kimi shrugs, glad his eyes are hidden behind sunglasses so Seb can’t see the ways his eyes twitch. “You even share meal plans now?” There’s amusement in his tone, he knows, but all the same, there’s also an undertone of incredulity, of worry.

 

Kimi launches himself further into the pool. The water is cold, even for this elevation, but it feels heavenly lapping around his head to assuage his incoming headache.

 

“He’s going to suck everything he can from you,” Seb calls from the side of the pool. “Use everything he can and then move on.” Despite himself, Kimi bristles. “I’ve seen it before. That’s the type of boy he is. Use your affection on the track.”

 

Kimi can only hear him partially with the lapping water around his ears. _No_ , he thinks. _Yes._ Seb knows a different Max, a harder one, a resolute, overconfident one. But did he really know a different one? Or was it a rotating facade, put on for Kimi’s benefit and Max’s gain? He flicks back to Austria this year—champagne kisses and lazy naps together in the recesses of the triple header, both content just to sleep in the presence of eachother. Singapore last—splintered, snapped carbon fiber and kissing the frustrated tears away from a stubborn, crumbling Max, lamenting the failing season. Brazil the year before that. And all the frustrating silences in between—Mexico, where Max angrily disavowed him, asked him if he could ever care and Kimi hid, slunk to refuge behind tinted glasses. Monaco, with Kimi receding into his own sullen silence for losing his win and Max, young and callow, only knowing how to mirror the wall Kimi’s shown, sprung up his own defenses.

 

 _Yes_ , Kimi knows—he’s known all long, he’ll snappishly defend at the person who decides to challenge him. He cares, yes, for whatever they have.

 

Seb is trying to look out for him, Kimi rationalizes. He shouldn’t be worried, he soothes. It’s casual, he tells Seb. After all, he’s miles older, has seen racers that are fractions of Max pass through, try the same thing. It’s helps both of them, he explains, thinking of the tensions of being on a tapering contract and seeing the flicker of an extension waver increasingly before him. He tempers Max and all of his ambition. Mutually beneficial.

 

“More like mutually destructive,” the German snorts but lets go of the issue, content to doing more laps across the pool and basking with partially concealed delight at his present, his future, and his life.

 

It’s not until later in the evening as Kimi takes his dinner alone in the candle-lit darkness, Sebastian gone with some of the locals to explore more of the quaint settlement, that he realizes he hasn’t responded to Max. He sends a snap of his tiramisu. ‘ _Indulging a little like you said,_ ’ he types back. It’s domestic, he realizes. Sends texts even when they don’t have to. Little parts of his life, shared with someone. And he would find it difficult to do if Max hadn’t— _hasn’t_ — shared just the same, given even more to Kimi.

 

Would it stay like this? Kimi wonders. After he’s retired, moved apart—probably not. He won’t think about it in that case, he decides. Let it come eventually. Wait for Max to bring up because after all, he’s always been the doer, and he’ll move on, like he always has. Maybe find a beach in South America or an icy ski house in Canada. Maybe he wouldn’t—he doesn’t know, and it’s too much thought for vacation.

 

Hours blur into days, and Kimi doesn’t leave this limbo. He knows he’ll have to return to reality, to the sport he hates but loves and feels more and more of nothing but everything towards. Maybe he won’t come back, stay here in Andorra forever. But no, it doesn’t feel quite right to him.

 

And Seb doesn’t say much when he decides to split his stay a couple days short, just rings an old Red Bull friend to fly out, gazes at Kimi packing with knowing eyes. Somehow, Kimi finds himself, pulled on tenterhooks, jerkily passing through customs, into the busy Monaco he hates so much with its pounding drills of construction and crowded streets, in front of an unfamiliar gilded door without knowing exactly how he’s gotten there. Knocks, hears the rustling, knows it’s late—past midnight, the voice he can so easily recall in his head even thousands of miles away.

 

“Kimi.” It’s a statement more than a question. Finalty rather than tentativeness. Max, he wants to snark back, in rumpled shorts and wet, shining eyes, mussled hair. Part of his heart beats back to Kimi’s bewilderment, consternation—delight.

 

“Aren’t you going to let me in?” Kimi asks with a frozen mouth. Maybe this was a bad idea. He’s probably with friends. Doesn’t want him to intrude onto the parts of his neatly separated life Kimi doesn’t belong in.

 

Max trails him into his apartment. There, the city lights twinkling and the black expanse of the port water. There, a discard FIFA set and pizza box, the only evidence of Max being there. There, Max, bemused and tired, smells like his lemongrass shampoo, even tanner than his quick photos bely, and a little slimmer as he presses a warm kiss to Kimi’s neck in the nook he always does after sex.

 

“Why are you here?” comes the eventual question as Max pops open two beers, the brand Kimi likes second only to Finnish vodka. He wants to show Kimi the lights, he explains to Kimi’s incognizance, so they’re on the balcony. “It’s not race week.”

 

 _No_ , Kimi wants to spar back. _That’s obvious._ Instead he shrugs, closing off the inner pangs of emotion he feels. “I thought I should,” he trails off, “visit.” Painfully lacking, he congratulates himself. “I wanted to see you.” Good job, Kimi. “Do you want me here?” he tacks onto the end. Should have called, texted, asked, brought a gift—the orchids he’s seen Max with on race weekends, a bottle of old wine whose history is lost on Kimi. “I should have brought something, but I wasn’t sure where...” he rambles.

 

Max cocks his head to the side in the terrier-like way that Kimi finds endearing. Splits his face with the distinguishable smile. There’s a party going on somewhere below, the tinkle of smashed glass, a woman’s yelp and giggle, the low bass of music playing.  

 

“No,” Max says slowly, taking another swig of his beer. “It’s good.” He grasps the hand Kimi’s curled around the railing. He’s warmer, as always, Kimi notices. “I’m glad you’re here.” He presses a sweet kiss to the corner of his mouth. Another to his shoulder, the cotton stitch separating them, breaths in the scent of his detergent and deoderant. His eyes refract the glittering street lights, store signs, cracks of light peeking from apartments across the harbor, ripples of the saltwater haven in between. Kimi presses one to his forehead.

 

It’s later when they’re both sprawled on Max’s bed. It’s too hot for Kimi to sleep under the comforter, he’s taken to wrapping an arm to Max, separated by blankets. Kimi’s gotten sucked off, only had to roughly swipe a subsequent thumb over Max to get him to come.  And both are tired, but neither are asleep. They stay like that—Kimi would be remiss to move, and he’s not quite sure what’s next, he still has his fears churning inside, worries corroding his spine from the inside, but it’s enough, he realizes. They have the present, and the present becomes the future, so Kimi’s happy to revel in the thrumming life that pools, sloshes, spills inside Max because it’s enough for the next day, for the next month, year, and Kimi’s happy because Max is too.

 

 

 


End file.
